


Nessun Dorma

by superblackmarket



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, italy 1944, second world war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: Low on the horizon, an airplane smoked into sight. Nicky’s heart soared in his chest—could it be? could it? The plane was clearly in distress, though, its propeller windmilling frantically. Nicky winced as the engine burst into flame. Canisters, boxes, and three figures sailed out of the crippled plane and disappeared behind the mountain. The plane exploded against a cliff.His family certainly knew how to make a fucking entrance.OR, Nicky fights a private war and decides he will never be parted from Joe again.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 98
Kudos: 626





	Nessun Dorma

“Did you and Joe ever split up?” Nile asks.

“Not since that one time in the thirteenth century.” Nicky looks over at Joe, who is sitting at the kitchen table, methodically sharpening his scimitar. “But you have to understand that it was all a ridiculous misunderstanding involving a fig-seller, and Yusuf returned within three hours.”

“I didn’t mean did you ever _break_ up, god.” Nile wields a savage eyeroll, Nicky is learning, and she puts it to good use against him now. It makes him feel rather less than his nine hundred and fifty years. “I mean, have you guys ever fought in different places, or do you always stick together?”  
  


***

  
In January 1944, Nicky abandoned the French Resistance and traveled alone to Italy.

Leaving Joe was like leaving a piece of his soul behind, but he felt he had no choice. They’d spent the last few years running around Vichy France with a ragged band of communist partisans, blowing up train lines, attacking German convoys, and smuggling fugitives out of the country. It was dangerous, vital work, but with every passing month, Nicolò ached more fiercely for his homeland.

He had only become ‘Italian’ in the last century; before that he was Genovese or at most Ligurian. National identity had been thrust upon him just in time for his nation to disgrace itself, repeatedly, accumulating shame upon shame as the twentieth century unraveled. First the Blackshirts and the rise of fascism, then Mussolini’s inglorious African adventure, and now the unholy alliance with the Nazis. Nicky was disgusted with Italy and with Italians: Mussolini had screwed them with history, yes, but it wasn’t always rape; plenty of them bent over. Put ordinary shitheads in impressive uniforms, give them guns and permission to use them, and they would shoot anyone who threatened their illusions—nearly nine centuries of living had taught him that.

But there was a growing resistance movement as well, and Nicolò was determined to join it. So he left his dearest companions and the love of his life back in France and crossed the border into northwestern Italy. Andromache, Yusuf, and Sebastien would join him in three months’ time; meanwhile, Nicolò would conduct a reconnaissance mission to determine where their unique talents might be most useful to the movement.

There were enough factions to make his head spin. Apart from ordinary gangsters, northwestern Italy boasted more than a hundred bands of anti-fascist partisans: liberals, Christian Democrats, socialists, communists, Garibaldi brigades, Catholic Action brigades, Liberty and Justice brigades, Bread and Justice brigades. Most of them, Nicolò discovered, couldn’t organize a bun fight in a bakery.

Of course, there wasn’t any bread, either. As he trekked through the rural hamlets, all he found was stark, grinding poverty. He began to wonder if he had made a mistake. He could go back to France, to Yusuf—

But then, high in the mountainside, he found the children. 

The majority of them were local kids born in the unlucky years of 1924 and 1925: draftees were raked up by the Germans, so the boys had deserted and gone into hiding. They were joined by other runaways and refugees, boys and girls alike. Fed and supplied by the peasants of the nearby villages, these gangly adolescents talked a big game but had little in the way of discipline or direction.

Nicolò organized them into the First Alpine Division of the Armed Anti-Fascist Resistance. His “brigade” was forty-seven short of a hundred-man company, and they carried a haphazard collection of guns that had belonged to someone’s nonno, but bombast came naturally when you’d heard fascist propaganda all your life.

Three months later, Nicolò looked upon his soldiers with tremendous pride. Admittedly, they weren’t much to look at. They appeared to have been outfitted at a jumble sale—Italian army jackets, city tweeds, hand-knit jumpers, baggy peasant pants, trousers from German uniforms, laced hunting boots, wooden clogs, German combat boots. They were heavily armed with an equally international collection of military-issue weapons, shotguns and hunting rifles, police pistols, and meat cleavers. But they were the bravest of the brave, these children, Nicky thought. The girls especially, braver even than the boys. The chances they took, the risks they ran. Constantly on the move, traveling on foot in the awful cold, sleeping in cellars, on concrete floors, in barns or open country. Hungry, wet, lice-ridden…

They called him the Priest. Nicky had no idea where the nickname had come from. They had no way of knowing the ancient truth of it, of course, and he’d never joined the more devout of them in prayers. When they weren’t fighting or training, he listened quietly while they chattered about themselves, asking the occasional question and offering the rare comment. The Priest was more of an idea than a person; perhaps he reminded them of the confessional. 

At night, though, Nicky dreamt of Joe. Andy and Booker sometimes, too, but mostly Joe: Joe, strapping explosives to a train track; Joe, reading by the light of a campfire; Joe, slumbering uneasily; Joe, strafed by machine gun fire, making Nicky cry out in his sleep, only to be shaken awake by one of his partisans before he could see him rise again; Joe, alive and well, laughing at something Booker had said—

Nicolò’s heart broke and broke, and lived by breaking.

Spring was late coming to the mountains. On a chilly morning in April, Nicky sat utterly still, staring out into the first grey light of dawn. “Grenades,” he said softly, “on my command.”

The brigade would have been in deep shit, had Nicky—restless, sleepless, heartsick—not been wandering the perimeter of their camp—yet another stone ruin crumbled atop yet another scrubby mountain—and spotted movement down below. Several platoons of fascisti had slipped past the guards and crept, heavily armed, toward the hilltop. He opened fire on the nearest, all of whom had their hands full with climbing. A minute later, fifty-three young partisans were running to join the attack on what turned out to be some five hundred Nazis and Blackshirts _,_ supported by heavy and light machine guns, mortars, artillery, three armored cars, and two tanks at the bottom of the hill.

With the element of surprise gone, the enemy troops had been pinned down for two dark hours by random fire. Now that the dawn had exposed their positions on the hillside, they could do little more than cower and pray as Nicky’s young fighters picked them off.

Nicky gave the signal then, a piercing whistle, and a veritable orchard of pineapple grenades flew downhill. One-sided slaughter continued until a no-man’s land was established.

“Shoot only when you see a good target,” Nicky cautioned, and a young woman moved along the line, crouched in the shadow of a stone terrace, relaying his orders. “Conserve ammo.”

He closed his eyes, concentrating on the topographic maps he saw in his head. He directed three squads into the wooded ravines that ribbed the mountain, leaving about half the force to hold the high ground.

“Is the Priest out of his mind?” one of the boys demanded. He was quickly shushed by another, but the protest echoed along the line: “Why is he splitting the force?”

Serene, Nicky waited.

Now taking only light resistance, enemy troops advanced to within sixty paces of the crumpled castle’s defenses. Encouraged by the lull, an officer shouted into a megaphone that they were surrounded, and their position was hopeless.

Nicky’s voice rang out like a rifle shot. Bullets, grenades, and body parts flew, until the enemy could neither advance nor retreat. The partisan squad that had moved to the rear rose to let loose volley after volley. The fascisti turned to face the threat, only to be raked from their left. Grey-and-black uniforms turned red. Helmets cartwheeled downhill. Rock and weed took on the color of oxblood. Junior officers bellowed conflicting commands as men collapsed and fell around them.

And then, on the road below, the Nazi artillery units began to withdraw. The guns were left behind, and the remaining troops tried to melt away, leaving their wounded and dying behind.

Crows converged to bicker over bodies. Nicky shaded his eyes against the light. Midafternoon already.

“Collect enemy weapons and ammunition, and eliminate the wounded,” he ordered. “A single bullet to the head, no more.”

The young partisans flooded down the hill to do as he said. 

Just one of their own had been injured, a fourteen-year-old runaway from Calabria called Santino. Two of his female comrades supported him between them, and Nicky instructed them to lay the boy down on the grass. He was breathing in short, grunting coughs. “One gunshot, Priest,” a girl reported. “Hit from behind in the left shoulder. The exit is on the right.”

Nicky tapped Santino’s chest with the tips of his fingers. Below the left clavicle, the chest resonated like a drum. Lower down: a dull sound, like tapping a stone. Nicky took a scalpel from his surgical kit and murmured in the boy’s native Calabrian dialect that this would hurt, he would have to be very brave. Quickly he sliced through the pleura, ignoring the boy’s scream as he widened the knife track. The wound bubbled. “Drain,” Nicky said, holding out his hand, and one of the girls handed it to him. He pushed seven centimeters into the cavity. Blood gushed through the chest tube, drenching the front of Nicky’s shirt.

Santino gasped and coughed in the cold sweat of agony, but his lung began to expand. Relieved, Nicky instructed the girls to make a stretcher so he could be moved to one of the nearby villages for treatment.

“Look!” someone cried, pointing upward. “Look!”

They all looked up to the sky. Low on the horizon, an airplane smoked into sight. Nicky’s heart soared in his chest—could it be? _could it?_ The plane was clearly in distress, though, its propeller windmilling frantically. Nicky winced as the engine burst into flame. Canisters, boxes, and three figures sailed out of the crippled plane and disappeared behind the mountain. The plane exploded against a cliff.

His family certainly knew how to make a fucking entrance.

Nicky stood. “I will go alone,” he told his young fighters. “Everyone else is to stay here, is that clear?”

They didn’t like it, but they had been disciplined by the long months in the mountains.

Nicky followed the narrow mountain path behind the castle, cutting through a dense forest. He tramped down a ravine, circumnavigated a kettle pond, rounded the hip of a hill—and then at last he spotted them out on a narrow plateau, three persons emerging from a tangle of harnesses, parachutes, and plane debris.

He broke into a run, submachine gun bouncing against his shoulder.

By the time he reached them, their bones had nearly finished knitting themselves back together. Joe and Andy were on their knees, trying to disentangle Booker from his parachute.

Joe was the first to catch sight of him. Abandoning Booker, he staggered to his feet and began to run too, gait stiff and unsteady on still-healing bones. Nicky closed the distance between them, and together they collapsed to the ground.

They clutched each other tightly. There were no words exchanged, just desperate, hungry kisses as their hands roamed over one another’s bodies, checking for damage, seeking out the comfort of muscle and bone covered in smooth, unmarred skin, the reassurance of two hearts pounding in unison once more.

Never again, Nicolò thought. Never, never again.

Joe’s hair was longer and his beard shorter, but otherwise he was unchanged. Relieved, Nicky pressed kisses to his forehead, his cheeks, his chin and his nose, before returning to his mouth once more. He ran his tongue along the crenellations lining the roof of Joe’s mouth, each groove achingly familiar. Joe sucked eagerly on his tongue, calloused hands cradling his jaw.

Someone coughed loudly behind them; they broke apart just enough to press their foreheads together instead of their mouths. “Is this your blood?” Joe murmured in Arabic, fingering the front of his shirt.

“No,” Nicky replied in the same language, fingers knotted tightly in Joe’s beloved curls. “I was treating one of my fighters for a collapsed lung, the blood is his. I haven’t had any deaths, Yusuf.”

“You look gaunt,” Joe said, dragging a thumb along his cheekbone.

“Things have been a bit lean,” Nicky conceded. He’d shaved yesterday, but his clothing was threadbare and many times mended. “What about you?” he asked, relaxing his grip on Joe’s hair. “I dreamt your death the once, from machine gun. Did you die again after you jumped from the plane?”

“No,” Joe assured him. “Fractured tibia and collarbone, nothing serious.”

“Andromache? Sebastien?”

“Nobody died, though Booker got the worst of it. His parachute didn’t open properly.”

At last, Nicky turned to the other two, waiting a short distance away. He stood and enveloped first Andy, then Booker, in firm hugs. “Andromache, you are radiant,” he told her; she had cut her hair into a chin-length bob, very chic, very French. “And Booker, you look…” Sebastien was freshly barbered, closely shaved, and he even seemed taller, somehow. “Are you sober?” Nicky demanded.

“And bearing up bravely,” Booker said.

“It suits you,” Nicky told him. “Who was flying the plane?”

“Me.” Andy shrugged. “The propeller broke, not my fault. Shame about the supplies, though.”

“We do alright for ourselves here,” he said, masking disappointment. “Come, I’ll take you to our camp.” They collected the supplies that had survived the crash, and Nicky led the way back up the mountain. The path was too narrow for Joe to walk at his side, but he extended a hand behind him and Joe grasped it, loath to let go even as they slipped along the treacherous ravine.

When they reached the old castle, there was a shout, and suddenly they were staring down the barrels of several dozen guns. “At ease,” Nicky told his brigade. “These are my companions: Josef, Booker, Andreea. Andreea is my commander; she is now yours as well.”

The children stared at the three newcomers, openmouthed. “They can be trusted, Priest?” one of the girls inquired at last. “They are not Germans?”

“Not a blessed one of us,” Joe replied cheerfully.

“ _Priest_?” Booker repeated.

“It is a sort of battle name,” Nicky explained.

“Can they fight, these friends of yours?” a boy asked. 

“Can _you_?” Andy returned.

“I can strip a pistol in less than a minute,” the boy boasted.

“Oh yeah?” Andy said. “Show me.”

The boy knelt on the ground and methodically took his 7.65mm RIAF Beretta ’35 to pieces: he removed the magazine, turning the safety on. Locked the slide, pushed the barrel back, and lifted it from the rear. Fifty-seven seconds. “I can do the Breda, too,” he bragged. “And two minutes for the machine gun.”

“Impressive. But can you shoot it?” Andy said.

“See all those dead Germans down there? Some are mine.”

Soon half the brigade was clamoring to show off their skills. Smiling faintly, Nicky watched Andy suppress her irritation in the face of all this adolescent enthusiasm. She waded into their midst, correcting a grip here, a stance there. Grateful to be relieved of his command, at least for now, Nicky permitted himself lean into Joe, ever so slightly. He wanted desperately to be alone with him. Wanted to be able to hold him and kiss him, peel him out of his dirty clothes and press into him. Their souls would always be joined; the separation of their bodies was unholy and unnatural.

“You’ve done well with them, Nicolò,” Joe said, his eyes warm.

Booker made a furious sound, and they both turned to look at him.

“Done well? They’re kids!” Booker hissed in French. “This is the twentieth century, Nicky, not the fucking Dark Ages. What the hell are you doing, turning these kids into child soldiers? And you let them call you _Priest_? What’s wrong with you?”

“Booker—” Joe began warningly, but Nicky rested a hand on his arm.

“It’s all right, love. Sebastien is right, the children should not have to fight. But they were already at war. They had taken up arms long before I found them. Many of them had no choice. So I have organized them to fight better, and I try to keep them safe as best I—”

“They should be in school,” Booker interrupted. 

“We hold school in the evenings. Some were illiterate, now at least they can read a little and write their own names—”

“So they can sign each other’s death warrants?”

“Fewer will die if they are well armed and well led,” Nicky said.

“There’s a whole hillside covered in bodies.”

“Nazis, Blackshirts. We did not lose a single soldier.”

“Priest! _Priest_!” Booker laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Damn it, Nicky, weren’t you supposed to be god-fearing, once upon a time? Or don’t you care about your soul anymore?”

Nicky exchanged a glance with Joe. Joe looked angry, but Nicky was amused by the question. “I’ve been alive for almost nine hundred years,” he reminded Sebastien. “What I have seen would make an atheist of Abraham, and yet, here I am.”

Booker exhaled noisily. “Should’ve stayed in France. You Italians are fucking amateurs.”

Nicky smiled broadly at that. “Amateur,” he said, “from the Latin _amator_ —lover. Thus, one who engages in an enterprise for love, not money. In the case at hand, for love of Italy. For love of liberty. For love of those who flee tyranny and those who resist it. So yes, Booker, we are fucking amateurs, and we wear it with pride.”

“I want to kiss you,” Joe said in Arabic. “I find it terribly arousing when you make speeches, and I wish you would do it more often.”

Nicky swatted his arm.

“The Great War killed courage with machine guns. This one’s murdering chivalry.” Booker sighed and ran a hand over his face. “You’re right, Nicky, of course you are. I simply…”

Nicky felt a wave of compassion for the man and put an arm around his shoulders. “I understand, Booker. Your questions do you credit. The most appalling things can become just part of the job. And afterward…”

“…there are days when you’re ashamed to be sane.” Joe finished the thought for him; Nicky nodded. 

“And heroism requires fear, which is why I am incapable of it,” Booker said. “Do you have anything to drink up here? I’ve been sober since yesterday.” 

Sebastien wandered off to search for grappa, and Joe touched his elbow. “Why don’t you show me around your castle?” he suggested, a devious glint in his eye.

Nicky glanced up at the sky. Sundown. Soon the nonne would be arriving from the villages with food for the ever-ravenous troops—cornbread and boiled chickpeas washed down with rough red wine, maybe a few cans of tuna and half a wheel of parmesan if they were lucky—and the Priest wouldn’t be missed, especially not with Andy and Booker for them to gawk at.

“These mountains have sheltered fugitives for centuries, you know,” Nicky remarked, taking Joe by the hand and ducking under a crumbling archway. “The villagers told me that when Napoleon invaded Italy, the women were hidden from the French up here.” He drew Joe deeper into the heart of the ancient fortress. On the second floor he’d carved out a sort of cell for himself, with all four walls and most of the ceiling still intact, but he seldom spent any time there because he seldom slept. It contained only his bedroll, his pack, a lantern, and a few books—Tolstoy, Sun Tzu, Marx, the King James Bible.

“You’ve been living very rough, my love,” Joe said, voice heavy with regret. He traced the slope of Nicky’s nose with his forefinger, then caressed the line of his jaw. Nicky let his eyes drift shut for a moment, leaning into Joe’s hand. After three months apart, the simplest of touches made him dizzy with relief and yearning.

Then he opened his eyes. “Being apart from you—that was the only hardship,” he replied, a little shakily. “I... These past months, I, I’ve played a—not even a character. Less. An idea. It was all I could do, because there is no me without you, Yusuf. I don’t exist.”

“Nor I,” Joe said, hands at his waist, drawing him closer. “What Booker said about heroism, Nico, that it requires fear and he is therefore incapable of it…”

Nicky draped his arms around Joe’s neck.

“I don’t think I know what heroism looks like anymore, but—”

Nicky had been leaning into kiss him; something in Joe’s expression paused him. “Yusuf—”

“—but I do feel fear, constantly. Fear for you, fear of losing you. It’s almost unbearable. And with such terrible things happening in the world, I…” Joe’s eyes were wet now. “There are no words for how much I love you.”

“Or I you.” Nicky swept his thumbs under Joe’s eyes. “We’re together now, my heart.” He kissed him before he could think of anything else to say. Slow and deep this time, letting his mouth linger. Joe’s lips were warm and vital, his tongue urgent. Nicky started unbuttoning his shirt, stiff with dried blood. Joe’s fingers joined his; together, they undid all the buttons and then Joe divested him of the filthy garment and tossed it aside.

“I should wash,” Nicky said regretfully, breaking out the kiss. “It’s not even my blood…”

Joe watched him beadily as he dampened a rag with water from his canteen and began wiping down his neck and chest. Soon Joe claimed the rag for himself and took over, applying the cloth in slow, sensuous strokes. Nicky felt his nipples tighten. He leaned back against Joe’s broad chest, shivering as Joe dragged the cloth lower over his abdomen. “I know I look a little worse for wear from the crash,” Joe murmured, “but I’ll have you know that I had a very thorough bath in a very nice tub only this morning.”

Nicky snorted. “Were you planning ahead, my love?”

“Let us say that I had a premonition.”

Nicky turned once more in his arms to face him. “Good,” he said seriously. “Because I’ve had the runs for weeks.”

Joe threw back his head and laughed. “Nicolò, poet of my heart. Not that it’s stopped us in the past.”

“Where there’s a will,” Nicky agreed. He struck a match for the lantern. “As much as I hate to rush things along, caro mio _,_ we should probably be quick. Andromache won’t thank me for leaving her in custody of my brigate rosse.”

“So you’ve turned them into communists?” Joe dragged his shirt over his head and started on his trousers. Nicky watched, entranced by the golden skin revealing itself as Joe stripped. Desire tingled at the base of his spine, sending little firefly jolts through his body. “I said, have you turned your flock into communists, Red Priest of mine?” Joe repeated.

“Oh.” Nicky sat on the ground to unlace his boots. “I was joking, mostly. ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need’ is almost an understatement when you’re living in the mountains like a goat.”

Joe was naked now, stretched out on the bedroll with his head propped on his hand. Resplendent in the lamplight. “Well, you and your red brigade are certainly holding your own against the German war machine. I’m very, very impressed.”

“It’s in our blood.” Nicky unfastened his belt and his trousers immediately sagged low on his boney hips.

Joe hissed. “So thin, Nico.”

“It’s really nothing,” Nicky assured him.

“You look like shit. Do you sleep? How long have you been awake?”

“How long does it take for milk to spoil?” Nicky said dryly.

Joe glowered.

Nicky finished undressing. “Italy is always being invaded,” he said carelessly. “Lombards, Carthaginians, Vandals, Saracens, Spaniards, Normans, Englishmen, Americans. I can’t even remember if this is the third or fourth time for the Germans.”

“Do Goths and Visigoths count?” Still frowning, Joe beckoned him down to the bedroll, and Nicky settled between his thighs.

“I suppose they would. The point is, we’ve seen them all, and we’ve outlasted them all.” He rested his cheek on Joe’s chest, momentarily distracted from sex by the simple ecstasy of pressing their skin together. He’d mapped every inch of Joe’s body a hundred thousand times and had the topography memorized, but touch was elusive, hard to conjure in a vacuum. He dragged his fingers over Joe’s ribs, trailed them lower. His thumbs had always fit perfectly in the grooves of Joe’s hips.

Obligingly, Joe spread his legs wider. “Promise me we’ll sit out the next war in Switzerland,” he said.

“Switzerland,” Nicky sniffed, wrapping a hand around his cock. “Fucking terrible food, no?” 

“Ah, Nicky…”

He made his way down Joe’s body, alternating kisses with sharp little bites. He rubbed his nose through the coarser hair below his navel, inhaling deeply, then caught some between his teeth and yanked, just to make Joe yelp and curse. He swallowed him down without warning while Joe was still mid-complaint, taking him deeper until Joe’s cock hit the back of his throat. The weight and heft, the taste; his eyes fluttered shut.

Joe was uncharacteristically silent. After a few minutes, Nicky opened his eyes and traveled his gaze up the length of Joe’s body, seeking—argument, assurance, something—and was met with an expression of such deep and abiding love that he had to stop what he was doing and crawl back up to kiss him. Their mouths met urgently, and they kissed like they were punctuating a sentence. Short and direct, period; long and lingering, comma; loud and smacking, exclamation point; lazy staccato, ellipsis.

“Stay up here with me,” Joe implored between kisses. “Anywhere else is too far away.”

Nicky was inclined to agree. He fumbled in his surgical kit for lubricant, offering up a brief prayer that he wouldn’t be made to regret using it for pleasure. Joe grew talkative again as Nicky stretched him open. “Your beauty is the axis on which the earth spins, the obliquity of the eclipse,” he said, when Nicky had one finger inside him and was delicately massaging his rim with a second. “It was a long winter in Hades, so far from my true love’s warmth,” Joe told him a short time later, shifting impatiently around three fingers while Nicky nibbled along his collarbone. Nicky raised his head to tell him that he was mixing his cosmologies—“flattering, as I’m not even inside you yet”—and tapped his forefinger on that spot deep inside him. He cupped his other hand over Joe’s mouth just in time to muffle his shout. “Think of the children,” he scolded, mock-severe. “I can’t have them running in here to find their Priest compromised so.”

“You would think,” Joe said, after he took his hand away, “that after three months’ deprivation, a man would not be subjected to such cruel teasing by his lover.”

“You would think,” Nicky countered, “that after three months, a man could wait a little bit longer.”

But as soon as he withdrew his fingers, Joe took hold of his cock and began to guide it inside himself. Nicky—the rest of him—followed blindly. The first clutch of Joe’s heat was irresistible, and he sank deeper and deeper until their bodies were flush. Face pressed against Joe’s shoulder, Nicky finally found the voice to ask him how it was, if he felt good.

Joe inhaled sharply; his long, shuddering exhale traveled through both their bodies. “You are my wine, my joy, my garden, my springtime, my slumber, my repose, without you, I can’t cope,” he replied, laughter in his voice, and Nicky pushed himself up on his elbows, brimming with fond exasperation. 

“Rumi,” he said, “is not the yes or no I was looking for.” But it was enough. He drew back, then snapped his hips forward with steely precision.

“Fuck, Nicolò.” Joe groaned, tipping his head back to expose his throat. “That’s so fucking good.”

He dragged his tongue along the column of Joe’s neck and bit tenderly at his throat. “You would like for me to do it again?”

In response, Joe grabbed two fistfuls of his ass and tried to pull him deeper still. 

No more teasing, then. Nicky began fucking him in earnest, aiming for his prostate with every thrust. He would have preferred to make love to Yusuf with the kind of dreamy languor reserved for late afternoons or early mornings when time turned to molasses and their bodies seemed to dissolve into one another. But time was not on their side tonight, and neither were the Germans. Or Andromache and Booker, for that matter. “Legs up,” he told Joe, tapping his thigh, and Joe wrapped his legs around his waist, crossing his ankles at the base of his spine. Nicky reached back to caress a calloused heel. “Shall I touch you now? Make you come?”

“I wish you would,” Joe grunted. There was a bead of sweat running down his temple, and Nicky caught it with his tongue.

If only he had more arms, more hands, then he could touch Joe everywhere at once. His love for this man was too much for one human body to contain. Balanced on his left forearm, he maneuvered his right hand between their bodies so he could jerk him off. Joe bucked into his fist, a low whine coming from his throat. Nicky felt that sound resonate through his whole body; it lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his solar plexus. One more kiss and Joe was coming, coming all over Nicky’s hand. “Oh,” Nicky said, “oh—” and reared back on his last thrust so he could see Joe’s face as he came, too.

“I wondered if I was dreaming, when I saw you fall from the sky today,” he said presently, after their breathing had slowed. They lay on their sides facing each other, legs folded together, loath to disentangle even though Nicky knew they had been gone too long already. “I watched the road for you all week, but I never expected you to come from the sky.”

“Even after all these years, I’m still trying to impress you,” Joe rumbled, managing to look coy even with his hair in disarray and a streak of cum drying under his left nipple.

“It was Andy’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“You know the boss.” Joe shrugged lazily and placed his palm against Nicky’s chest, over his heart. “And I—”

“Shh.” Nicky pressed his fingers to Joe’s mouth, quieting him. “Do you hear that?”

Somewhere outside, a sweet-voiced tenor had begun to sing. _Nessun dorma, nessun dorma…_ One by one, other voices began to join in. Nicky had seen _Turandot_ in Milano with Joe some twenty years ago, and he’d taught his brigade the aria because he thought it appropriate for those who kept watch from a mountain: _no one sleeps, no one sleeps_ … He had always been moved by the melody and the lyrics, but these days it brought him to tears when the children sang it. _No one will know my name / and we will have to die / vanish, o night! / fade, you stars! / at dawn, I will win!_ Moved by the gallantry of elderly peasants and skinny kids who proposed to take on the Blackshirts and the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. Moved by the final stirring declaration of victory that must come from beyond the grave. The Germans had Tiger tanks, Nicky thought, but these children had _Turandot_ and courage and history on their side.

And he had Joe on his, which was all he needed in the end. Joe sucked sweetly on his fingers, and Nicky melted with love.  
  


***

  
“Apart, we are less,” he tells Nile. “I would never do it again.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the most part historically accurate. The story of the partisans in northern Italy is pretty remarkable--they fought and ultimately defeated the combined fascist forces with minimal outside help. It certainly seemed like a cause that would be near to Nicky's heart. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I love hearing from you.


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